Bridges of Stone
by aspen
Summary: During the sixth year holidays, Harry is once again rescued by the Weasleys, but things have changed since then. First-person narrative and rather despondent.


Bridges of Stone

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This was a rather despondent piece of nonsense that I wrote when I was feeling rather low. Just posting it to watch reactions. There are more parts, if you like. The first-person touch refused to go away. Apologies.

Disclaimer: All characters and places belong to J. K. Rowling.

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_...you can only push someone so far..._

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[**Harry**] 

I was washing the dishes when they called. Incongruous, I suppose. My jeans – a legacy from Dudley, and none too fitting – were rolled up around my knees, and there was a cloth around my shirt, as close as I would go to an apron. I must've looked a mess. Anyway, teenage boys, even in the Muggle world, don't do dishes with Dudley's jeans and cloths wrapped around their good shirts. 

I've known for quite a long while that I don't really cut a romantic figure. I deal with it. Galleons don't buy jeans. 

There was a loud horn outside the house, a horn that I somehow knew, and I ran to the window to look outside and there was the car, just as it had been in second year. I ran for the catch and stuck my hand out like an idiot. My hand, covered in dishwashing fluid, long-fingered and incongruous like the rest of me down to my bare feet, one jeans-leg slipping down to flow over my ankle. 

Ron was staring at me. I think he was horrified. 

'Harry.' _Percy_ was driving this car? I almost fainted. Wasn't he still investigating cauldron-bottoms? 'Get in. We've got your luggage. Come on, Ron – give him a hand up –' 

Ron, still staring at me as though he was seeing a two-headed Siamese twin, stuck out his hand. I knocked my leg on the sill in my haste to escape. If there was anything special about this particular summer, it was that I wanted so badly to get out. Ron pulled harder and I flew into the back seat, looking at the kitchen window. The Dursleys weren't home, or I would have had another leg-pulling. 

'You told us they wouldn't be here,' said Percy, smiling a kind, tired smile. 'We had to wait. I'm sorry –' 

'Nothing to be sorry about.' I stopped. Ron was tugging at the cloth that clung stubbornly to my chest. 'Ron, what –?' I let him tug the cloth off my shirt, then took it from him to wipe my hands of the suds. There was an expression on his face that seemed alien to it. 

He plucked the cloth out of my hands and dried his own hand off, then tossed it out of the car. It fell through the clouds, drifting to land in someone's garden. I tried not to think of how it would look, floating down from the sky. 

It was evident that Percy was thinking of it. '_Ron_,' he burst out. 'D'you know how that's going to look, a washcloth floating out of thin air?' He shook his head and turned back to the wheel. 'We'll have to watch out, that's all.' Traces of his apprenticeship with Crouch still showed, I thought, and wanted to laugh. 

'Leave it, Perce,' Ron said in a low, unhappy voice. I knew he was preoccupied, and suddenly the car seemed terribly empty, although the last time there had been only one more person. The twins and Ron collectively had personalities that filled up the car. I would've given anything, _anything_, to have a family like his. 'You can trust to their sensibilities. They'll probably forget about it and think they've gone all muddle-headed.' 

This seemed true, especially for the Dursleys. 

'True,' said Percy a touch peevishly, and swerved to the left, 'but you never know. You remember the last time they saw the car.' 

Ron didn't answer. His red hair, grown out to a length just boyish enough to escape teasing, seemed dimmed. He was avoiding my eyes. I knew there was something wrong with him, and couldn't think why my appearance, shabby as it was, had made him so upset. 

'We're almost there,' said Percy, interrupting our silence, and swooped down upon the Burrow. I felt that almost-familiar stirring of hope deep inside, that feeling which told me I was really home. I thought of the note I'd left at the Dursleys', on the dining room table where I was sure they'd notice it first. 

Dumbledore had promised that all my luggage would be sent there. I didn't want the trouble – and possible danger – of loading all my trunks into the car. 

We touched down on smooth dry grass. The garden was deserted. The Burrow, as lopsided as always but with many new parts tacked on (result of the money Fred and George sent home). Ron slid out of the car, his awkward all-legs scramble forgotten, and Percy slammed the doors. I climbed out, suddenly painfully aware of the jeans that were slipping down my hips and wishing for my trunk. 

'We got your clothes,' said Percy, as though he'd read my mind, 'they're upstairs, in Bill's room. You can go change, if you like.' 

I waited, somewhat awkwardly, for one of them to open the door. They seemed to be doing likewise. There was a minute-long pause. 

'Open the door, Harry,' said Ron, a trace of mischievous stubbornness in his voice. 

More to be polite than to follow instructions, I put my hand on the doorknob, and opened the door, which didn't creak any longer. There was a small flash of sea-blue, and I was standing face-to-face with someone I had parted with two weeks ago, someone with brown hair that went slightly lower than her shoulders and a sweet, concerned face. 

She put her arms around me. 'Hermione,' I said, just for the sake of saying it. 'How did you get here?' 

Over the top of my head she said to Ron, 'Were the Muggles there?' and said to me, 'You smell of soap.' Her voice was laughing, but I divined an underlying spark of concern in her simple words. She smelled of soap as well, but a nicer kind of soap; probably shampoo or something like that. I didn't care to mention it as she let go of me. 

Percy and Ron pushed both of us into the house. Mrs. Weasley was there to greet me, and she hugged me as well. She had mellowed out over the years; her face was softer, her voice not half as acid even when admonishing her grown children. Mr. Weasley shook my hand. The house seemed emptier than it had been. Ginny came out of her room and down the stairs, looking strangely grown-up and not childish and clumsy any more. She put her arms around me too, rather awkwardly and very briefly. 

The Weasleys have beautiful hair. Beautiful, beautiful hair, really. 

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Hermione's fingers traced endless patterns on the lace of the tablecloth. It was a small symbol of the Weasleys' updated status, the lace; a gift from Charlie really, but it was a marvel they could now keep things like that in the house. I was truly glad they had some finances now; I would gladly have given them all the gold in my account in Gringotts, if they would have taken it. 

Hermione had long, white fingers. They looked nice against the white lace. I watched her fingers moving, quite unlike my own work-roughened hands. Ron was watching her too, almost cagily. 

Charlie, who was staying over at the Weasleys' for a visit, asked me, 'Are you staying till the end of the holidays, Harry?' 

'Yes,' I said, looking at him. He didn't much resemble Ron. 

'Are you going back?' he asked, in a voice so low that only someone who was really listening could have heard. 'After Hogwarts?' 

I didn't know, really, and didn't want to think about it. I said, 'No. They probably won't want me.' The old sting barely made itself felt now, but it still hurt, as it always had, to know that there was no one in the world who wanted me at all. 

He paused. The shadows flickered over his nose and cheek. He looked like some thoughtful statue. 'If worst comes to worst, Harry…' he said, even lower, 'we can always…' He was gone in a flicker, pushing his chair in, disappearing into the kitchen. If there was one thing dragon-taming had taught him, it was how to move like a shadow, quickly and silently; most of the Weasleys either drifted or tripped like Ron, or trotted like Mrs. Weasley. 

I felt a little better. 

Hermione was watching me curiously from the other end of the table. 'Harry, what did Charlie say?' 

I knew she meant it kindly, and stopped myself from snapping as I did with Dudley whenever he pried into my business. 'Nothing. I – I couldn't hear.' A picture had come into my head, a picture of Dudley sitting droopily over tea and bread and butter, and I hated it. 

I was being selfish. It wasn't only me who was upset, despondent; even Dudley was lonely in a way that I could never understand, even Hermione had turned sad, writing me pages and pages of other-than-sensibilities that I never could understand over the holidays. She wasn't Hermione any more – the old Hermione had always been so sensible, so reassuring. 'I don't know anything any more, Harry,' she had written. 'I can't make sense of my life.' 

The next day a cheerful owl would come, saying that she had watched a root canal being done and describing it to me, and saying that she had met an old friend in her neighbourhood and become reacquainted. 

Life was full of contradictions. Hermione was no less so. 


End file.
